What we love…

the app encourages a routine during bath time and kids are given specific easy to complete tasks

What we’d love to see…

more toy choices for the bathtub, a towel for each bath related activity even if you take both a bath and a shower

Summary

Overall, this is a fun themed app that encourages kids good habits and routines during bath time and time using the bathroom.

Our Rating

[APP ICON] Dr. Panda Bath Time from Dr. Panda Games is the newest universal app for iOS. In this themed bath app you can complete a variety of bath related activities including: brushing your teeth, using the toilet and then washing your hands, taking a bath or a shower, picking out clean clothes to wear, washing dirty clothing. This app is designed for toddler through preschool age and is helpful especially for kids to learn routines or practice them. The game opens with a character entering via the door – it’s a random entry of who will appear and which tasks you will be asked to complete. After completing each item in the selected routine you earn a green checkmark. There is no spoken language or direction within the app, and lots of creative play opportunities as you can do items within the app that are not part of the “routine”.

My younger son loved setting up the animals bubble bath, but by far his favorite part was playing with the scuba mask and toys. He’s a bit younger than the demographic age of 3, however, he’s used my iPad a bit and I limited the screen time that he played while I played with him. As a mom, I liked that the app encouraged a routine, putting dirty clothes in the laundry, using the toilet, taking a shower or bath and brushing teeth. My son enjoyed running the bubble bath a lot and adding his favorite colored bubbles – which were of course green! The shower was fun with the expressions of the animals if the water was too hot or too cold! The hairdryer with the rainbow air was a cute addition to the app. I loved that it encouraged “fun” while mixing in the tasks and allowed you to go off routine if you wanted to and complete additional tasks. He also really liked doing “laundry” with taking off the dirty clothes, as well as the ones in the basket and then washing them. I also liked the self care aspect and that it wasn’t hard to complete each of the tasks. It was nice that it was a comprehensive app that focused on many aspects of items you would do in the bathroom rather than a singular activity – which can be great but at times means you have to get additional apps to target specific skills.

My son loves to “earn” toys for his bath. He asked for more toys – it seems to be random what you will get, sometimes it’s a boat while other times it’s a rubber ducky. Also, if you take a bath and then a shower, you don’t get the towel or the hair dryer a second time – which was a bit confusing for my son because that’s “not how we do it” and he asked “why?”. Other fun enhancements to the app could be the addition of being able to do your hair after a bath either brushing it or blow drying it, the ability to use the fun accessories on the wall including necklaces or sunglasses. There were also some shoe options, but we never could get to them to put them on.

You can turn off the promotion screens as well as on and off the music and external sounds within the app as well via the main screen. There are no in-app purchases or external advertisements. There is a pop up for other Dr. Panda Games as well as the ability to rate it in iTunes but there is a parental gate which requires you to enter your year of birth to proceed which means little fingers are less likely to get through.

Overall, this is a great themed app which will help younger kids practice routines in the bathroom. It is simple enough for toddlers and preschoolers to complete – even with short attention spans and teaches some great habits like cleaning up after yourself and washing hands after using the toilet. The app encourages open ended play and it doesn’t take long to complete the two tasks asked of your child which means you can play it for as few as five minutes or longer if you want to do more of the activities.

Alison, the American iMum is from Massachusetts. She lives there with her two sons and husband. In their spare time, they enjoy playing outside, enjoying nature and of course testing apps and fantastic products on their devices. My older son loves technology and loves testing out the “latest and newest” apps and tech. I love sharing information about apps and products with others to help them make decisions without feeling overwhelmed with all of the choices.

What we love…

What we’d love to see…

Summary

A great app for children to learn responsibilities and independence as they keep coming back to the app for more Advenchores and collectible cards to play.

Our Rating

‘Chores’ need not be a dirty word if we teach our children that everyone in the family has a role in maintaining the household and that their contributions are very important to keep the family happy. This makes them feel valued and more willing to do their part. We will also need a fair system of assigning chores and a proper system of recording if we want to see success.

Here is where Chortopia Chore App (free now) by Aurasync Studios, Inc. can help both parents and children work together harmoniously to get the daily chores done. To begin using the app, parents need to set up an account and select age-appropriate chores for each child (up to 4 accounts permitted). Tasks are color-coded and grouped into 3 categories – behavior (say please and thank you, help sibling, finish homework), outdoor (help wash car, help with garbage cans) and indoor-based (dust furniture, put clothes away). There is also a compilation of favorite or frequently used tasks for your convenience. What is useful is that you can add your own tasks to the app! Just remember to be clear in your instructions or expectations. When you have selected a chore set of 3 tasks, an Advenchore is created in the land of Chortopia. You can prepare up to 4 chore sets at any one time.

When you first hand over the app to your children, they will be introduced to the world of Chortopia and their role in helping to free a group of very important Chortopians (the Speakers). They need to complete a series of Advenchores to journey deep into the lands of Chortopia in order to save Chortopia. There are 4 parts to the Chortopia story (Secret of the Mystical Boxes) and Book 1: Mysterious Harvest is included in the app. Each book comes with 10 Advenchores that kids can unlock by doing chores.

Each Advenchore presents a problem for kids to overcome and they will need sufficient Chore Power to fix the problems. This power can only be earned from doing tasks (chores) specified in the app (remember that these tasks were chosen by you). Your kids simply tap on the tasks that they have finished, and have the work verified and approved by you before they can use the Chore Power. Tasks that are not done are sent back.

Getting the job done not only earn the players Chore Power to finish their Advenchores, they can also use the power to unlock mystical boxes to free Chortopians. Each freed Chortopian comes with a collectible character card that describes the Chortopian’s special power and power level. There are also bonus Legendary Chortopians to collect. Kids will like to spend time admiring their card collection or use them to play games like Card Scuffle in the app.

With separate accounts and each child being responsible for keeping track of their own work, maintaining the system is so much easier as parents just have to validate completed work in the app. It is simple to assign duties and kids get their rewards automatically in the app. There are no chores charts to maintain and kids are motivated to complete their duties (less nagging). Our only investment is to purchase the subsequent parts of the story for more Advenchores.

I think kids will like Chortopia as it has the components that can hold the interest of kids of today’s generation – adventure stories, card collectibles and card games. As the story is illustrated and fully narrated, children at early elementary level or younger will have no difficulty in following the storyline. I used the app with my youngest and he was more cooperative than usual! This has definitely taken off some of my stress and I do hope that we can sustain this success…

Chortopia is a great app for teaching responsibilities and independence. Children can start with daily routine activities and then learn the more difficult tasks. They will learn many life skills that are more important than having a clean home. Download the app today while it is free and enjoy 10 sessions of fun Advenchores!

Grace was working in the fields of early childhood education and staff training before quitting to attend to her 4 children full time. She and her family live in Singapore, which is well known for her highly competitive education system.

What we love…

What we’d love to see…

Even more boards on math.

Summary

Bitsboard Pro is the ultimate educational app with top-quality content and outstanding enabling features to meet the learning needs of every child.

Our Rating

How many times have you wished that you can modify a well-developed learning app just that little bit to better match your child’s skills. Or thought of replacing some of the content with your own instead? Have you ever wondered if there is this ONE App that can meet most (if not all) of your child’s educational needs? What about an app that can accommodate the educational goals and learning difficulties of an entire class?

This is a tall order for any app considering children learn at different pace and thrive in different learning environment. And to be able to add our own content in an app seems like an impossible task! But Bitsboard Pro has all our wishes covered. It is the ultimate educational app for children from preschool right up to elementary school level, giving you access to thousands of topics (with many new ones added every month) and the ability to customize the way students learn in the app as well as the app content itself.

Alright, most of us don’t have the time nor inclination to create our own content. We just want an app that has ready-to-download learning materials and Bitsboard has lots of content to offer. After creating a user account, you can browse through Bitsboard’s extensive lessons catalog or search for specific lessons and download (over the internet) the ones that you need. Here, lessons are presented in individual boards, each containing a series of flashcards (bits). Topics include languages, vocabulary, grammar, reading (sight words, word families, phonics, readers), sentence maker, speech, spelling, letter tracing, math facts, math operations, money, time telling, sign language, routines, sequences, emotions and many more! The free version of Bitsboard itself comes with lots of shared resources that you can start with right away.

What I really love in Bitsboard is that you can choose up to 30 fully customizable learning modes or games that help children to learn and retain the information presented in the lessons. You can start with the simpler games and progress to the more complex ones. With so many different ways to learn the same materials, students remain engaged and learn better. Check out Bitsboard’s long list of fun learning games – Flashcards, Explore, True or False, Photo Touch, Photo Hunt, Memory Cards, Pop Quiz, Match Up, Word Builder, Sentence Builder, Spelling Bee, BINGO, Letter Tracing, Sequences, Related items, Word Search, Word Chunks, Crosswords, Unscramble, Say It, Missing Item, Puzzles, Reader, What’s Next, Odd One Out, Sort It, Side by Side, Story Time, Genius, Review Game and Board Creator

For each game, you can modify things like the session length, with or without visual/audio hints, spelling order, display options, number of tiles, matching options and answer mode. Customization is easy but it would be tedious if you have more than 1 user. Luckily, you don’t have to keep adjusting the settings and preferences as these are saved for each user (unlimited users for the Pro version). Likewise, the tracking of detailed progress and lesson plans is stored at the user level. Bitsboard’s learning algorithm also ensures that each game automatically advances according to the individual user’s skills.

If you are an educator, you will like the ease of creating custom lessons with your own cards (from photo library, dropbox, web search or Bitsboard Catalog of images), audio recording and text (words, phrases, sentences, description). Your students can learn anything you present to them using the Bitsboard learning games. You can also set up your own exclusive class with your own selection of boards for sharing with your students or fellow teachers privately.

I’m truly impressed with all the meaningful features that have been continually added in Bitsboard in order to support students and educators. There are many more that are not mentioned here. This all-in-one educational app far exceeds all my expectations in terms of content and ability to be customized. I don’t think you’ll find another app that is as versatile and comprehensive as this. Bitsboard Pro is an essential learning app that all families and classes must have!

Giveaway

If you would like to win a promo code for this app, please enter via the widget below. This giveaway is open to everyone, worldwide, and an iTunes account is required to claim the prize. Please ensure you have read and understand our Terms & Conditions. Good luck!

Grace was working in the fields of early childhood education and staff training before quitting to attend to her 4 children full time. She and her family live in Singapore, which is well known for her highly competitive education system.

Educational apps for young children are becoming more and more sophisticated these days. They have better visuals and offer more creative and challenging gameplay but sometimes, a child may feel overwhelmed by all the demands on his senses. So if you are looking for an app with simpler designs but still have a high level of educational content, you should check out Feed Me! (US/UK English) – Pencilbot School Pack by Edutainment Resources.

What we love…

Questions on various language concepts.

What we’d love to see…

Option to display the questions and answers in words for vocabulary learning and a brief explanation on why a chosen answer is wrong to maximize the learning opportunities.

Summary

An all-in-one fun and stress-free educational quiz app with hundreds of questions covering a wide variety of topics for children up to early elementary level.

Our Rating

Feed Me! uses a straight forward but cute question and answer format that young children will want to try as the app looks so easy and fun to play. All they need to do is to listen to the question and feed the correct answer to the purple monster who makes such silly actions and sounds that are sure to tickle your child’s funny bone.

A question is posed and 3 choices of answers are given. Kids can tap the monster’s speech bubble to hear the question again or tap and hear the answer options before answering (which I encourage kids to do, so that they can think through the options before answering).

When the correct answer is fed to the monster, kids can hear the answer repeated for reinforcement and in some sections, the reason why the chosen answer is correct is also given (yoghurt is good for your bones). When a wrong answer is fed instead, the monster will feel sick but there is no penalty. The player is simply given the chance to answer the same question over and over until it is correctly answered. It would be great if a brief explanation on why a chosen answer is wrong, be given as well so as to maximize the learning opportunities.

From a parent’s perspective, this app’s strength is the wide variety of math, language arts and language concepts covered. There are hundreds of questions with a variety of question types that are based on children’s interests, plus some stimulating questions that will get even the adults thinking. You will also like that there are separate log-in for up to 4 players, each with a personalized avatar.

The questions are divided into 3 categories – Math, Language Arts and Language Concepts. Each category has 2 levels and each level comes with questions on different topics. When your child completes all the questions from the same topic, he gets an animated reward in the trophy room. Parents can also monitor the child’s progress by viewing the Diploma for each level of questions.

The third category (which has 200 questions) on Language Concepts is my favorite as this section provides us with lots of language opportunities where we can ask our children to explain why a certain answer is chosen and why the other answers are wrong. Some of the topics covered here are:-

* Feelings (How do you feel? – I feel shy)
* Occupation (What go together – barber and scissors go together)
* Animal Sounds and Homes (Where does this animal live? – an ant lives in an ant hill)
* Weather/Seasons (What you need or see in this weather? – you need to drink lots of water in this sunny weather)
* Healthy Habits (What is good for you – eggs are full of protein)
* Safety (What keeps you safe? – look both ways before crossing the street)
* Signs (What kind of signs are these? – this means no…)
* Life cycles (What is the correct life cycle for this? – seed, sapling, fruit tree)
* Ordering of events
* Verbs (What are you doing? – I’m throwing a ball)
* Comparisons (Which is the hottest – the sun is the hottest)

With such a wide range of topics covered, the difficulty levels of the questions vary widely as well, from preschool to early elementary school levels. This is where I feel that the parents have to step in to choose the correct group of quiz questions for the child to play. Ideally, the adults should be on hand to guide when the children is working on the app. Find out more about this app by trying out some sample questions in the free version of Feed Me!

If you would like to win a promo code for this app, please enter via the widget below. This giveaway is open to everyone, worldwide, and an iTunes account is required to claim the prize. Please ensure you have read and understand our Terms & Conditions. Good luck!

Grace was working in the fields of early childhood education and staff training before quitting to attend to her 4 children full time. She and her family live in Singapore, which is well known for her highly competitive education system.

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Meet the iMums

The iMums - Amanda, Alison, Mary and Grace - are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to informing parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways! Read more.

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